Building Self-Managed Teams: A Case Study from Riot Games

Level-up Engineering

Interview with Mike Seavers, former CTO at Riot Games about building self-managed teams for high performance. Learn from a seasoned leader about making sure you have the right people, and coach them the right way to empower them so you can stop holding their hands. Unlock your team's potential and unleash them to do great work!

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In this interview we're covering:

• Relationship between performance and autonomy
• Role of the leader in self-managed teams
• Description of self-managed teams
• Making time to coach your employees
• Measuring the manager's performance in self-managing teams
• Leadership strategies to build self-managed teams
• Communicating your expectations
• Building self-managed teams in a new company
• Building self-managed teams in an established organization

Excerpt from the interview:

"In a self-managed team, even the most junior employee is empowered to make a meaningful decision that affects the team’s performance. They’re not dependent on management to make all the decisions. No winning team requires the coach to explain how to kick the ball; the coaching happens before and after the game.

Leadership’s job is to make the vision and the goals clear. In my one-on-one meetings, I always ask these questions from my reports:

• Is the company vision clear?
• Are the company goals clear?
• Do you understand what we’re trying to accomplish and the near-term objectives?"

Click here to read the full interview!